“Success is relative” wrote T. S. Eliot in his play The Family Reunion, “It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.” This is an apposite description of the current “success” in the EU. A financial and political disaster has been transformed into a permanent calamity.
Read more...Yves here. Das makes some statements in this post that I am certain will provide grist for reader discussion. But even if you quibble on some of the particulars, I anticipate you’ll agree on the extent of the damage done to trust at various levels of society and how costly it is proving to be.
Read more...Michael Hudson sent this short video which explains the history of debt jubilees and the role of private debt in the rise of oligarchies.
Read more...On Bill Moyers last week, Henry Giroux talked about how our political system is willing to throw young people on the trash heap, and indifference to rising homelessness among students is an ugly example.
Read more...The first thing I noticed after I’d removed the glossy brochure and a letter from the 8.5 x 11 envelope was the crisp $5 bill attached to the letter.
Read more...While Pete Peterson and Bob Rubin have couched their campaign against Social Security and Medicare in the moral vestments of “fiscal responsibility”, they gloss over the macroeconomic financial reality of government and the requirement for deficit spending to maintain growth of the national and world economies. The moral fervor that they apply is inapplicable to government programs: while it may seem real to them or the gullible politicians they influence, the moral outrage they hope to play on is based on false and inhumane premises.
Read more...Over the last year and a half, Wall Street hedge funds and private equity firms have quietly amassed an unprecedented rental empire, snapping up Queen Anne Victorians in Atlanta, brick-faced bungalows in Chicago, Spanish revivals in Phoenix
Read more...I have to confess I find stereotyping annoying, and in almost all cases, it’s a poor substitute for more careful analysis and characterization. Yet it is marvelously effective in politics, as Karl Rove proved.
Read more...The best political system that money can buy is doing a great job for its customers and a lousy job for the rest of us.
Read more...It has been a good generation to be involved with software. The scarcity of the skillset combined with the demand for the output have generated outsized incomes, while the work has been consistently rewarding. Our quirky group of builders has had an outsized influence on our industries, not to mention our culture and ideals. But that influence is looking less benign as the rigid procedures of computing are changing commercial relationships and the application of the law.
Read more...Prima facie evidence of the need to boycott Walmart (as if more were necessary)
Read more...This is the first segment of an ongoing project, Eurowinter, to record the human toll of austerity policies in Europe. It focuses on the suffering Greece, as told by Greeks themselves.
Read more...Absent sitting on the Supreme Court, it is difficult for a single judge to effect much change. Yet Jed Rakoff, in sending the SEC back to the woodshed in two separate cases over its failure to get factual admissions, meaning admissions of misconduct, on civil settlements of SEC cases, singlehandedly embarrassed the SEC and the Department of Justice into seeking these statements (for instance, numerous media reports indicate that the Administration wants that sort of confession as part of its pending settlement with JP Morgan).
Rakoff threw down another gauntlet in a New York Bar Association speech on Tuesday.
Read more...If a bad job market wasn’t damaging enough, the cost of paying off student loans does much more harm to the long-term prospects of young people than is commonly realized.
Read more...I really enjoy speaking with Harry Shearer, both for his engaging manner and his thorough preparation. I also hope you’ll see fit to circulate this interview, since the more attention we can bring to this plan to legalize corporate pillage, the better.
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